Kindertransport Memorial

The Kindertransport (German for "children's transport") was an organised rescue effort of children from Nazi-controlled territory that took place in 1938–39 during the nine months prior to the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 children, most of them Jewish, from Germany, Austria, occupied Czechoslovakia and the Free City of Danzig. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools, and farms. Often they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust. The programme was supported, publicised, and encouraged by the British government, which waived the visa immigration requirements that were not within the ability of the British Jewish community to fulfil. The British government placed no numerical limit on the programme; it was the start of the Second World War that brought it to an end, by which time about 10,000 kindertransport children had been brought to the country. Smaller numbers of children were taken in via the programme by the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Sweden, and Switzerland. The term "Kindertransport" may also be applied to the rescue of mainly Jewish children from Nazi German territory to the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. An example is the 1,000 Château de la Hille children who went to Belgium. However, most often the term is restricted to the organised programme of the United Kingdom. References in literature and testimonials to "Kindertransports to Palestine" use the term "Kindertransport" only in the general sense of "a transport of children," as they refer to the emigration of teenagers with Hachsharah certificates to Palestine. Pre-war Kindertransports that included young children without such certificates were prohibited from legal entry into British-controlled Mandatory Palestine after the Jewish Agency for Palestine's 1938 application was turned down by the British Colonial Office. The Central British Fund for German Jewry (now World Jewish Relief) was established in 1933 to support in whatever way possible the needs of Jews in Germany and Austria. In the United States, the Wagner–Rogers Bill which would have increased the quota of immigrants, bringing a total of 20,000 refugee children to the U.S., was proposed but did not pass.